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Hello from the Rector

Dear friends,

Last Saturday was a day of great joy as 7 people from our parishes were confirmed and received into the Church of England! Please pray for Debbie, Kim, Amanda, Steve, Chris, George and Keira as they grow in their faith – and ask them all about it, the service was amazing with 40 candidates being confirmed all together!

This Sunday we are marking Safeguarding Sunday where we think about ensuring that our churches are safe spaces for all. Our services are 8.30am Quiet Morning prayer at Barlborough and our Sung Eucharist is at 10am at Clowne.

As our Remembrance Sunday service was not livestreamed last week, I include the text of my sermon below for any that missed it.

See you soon.

Every blessing,

Rev Bryony

Here is the text of my sermon for Remembrance Sunday:

This season for the church is a season of remembrance. It begins with All Saints and All Souls’ days at the very beginning of November. A time for us to remember the saints who have gone before us, those Christians who have lived inspiring lives and continue to inspire us today. A time for us to then remember All Souls, that is all of our loved ones who have died who are now at rest with Christ. And now today we arrive at Remembrance Sunday and it is helpful that it also falls in this season when we spend time looking back to think of those who have gone before us, the legacy they have left us and what we might do to leave something positive for those who come after us.
On Remembrance Sunday we particularly think about those who gave their lives willingly so that we might live in freedom. People who gave up their lives for a people yet to be born.

Jesus told his followers to ‘love one another as I have loved you’. How did Jesus show his love for us? By giving up his life for us on the cross, by putting the needs of the world before his own.

The word love in English is a little limited. In the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, they had different words for the different types of love. For example, Philia means a kind of brotherly love. Eros is romantic love – taken from the name of the god of love. But the greatest kind of love, the love that Jesus is talking about is agape love. This is love that is unconditional, sacrificial and self-giving.
It is agape love that we celebrate today, that unconditional love of those who gave up their lives in war that others might live.

As Jesus says, ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’
Today we give thanks for those who laid down their lives that we might live but we also commit to trying to do the same, to offer ourselves in service in a similar way.

So what are the characteristics of this agape love?

Firstly, it’s sacrificial. It does have a cost to it. Agape love is a profound love that transcends circumstances and is often sacrificial. It gives without expecting a return. It doesn’t hesitate and say ‘wait, what is in this for me?’ It simply gives.

Secondly, agape love is Empathetic. Agape love involves showing empathy for others and wanting the best for them. Harper Lee put it really well in the words of Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view… until you climb in their skin and walk around in it.” Or perhaps as St Francis of Assisi put it: let me seek to understand rather than be understood. How do we do this? Perhaps a simple thing to remember is to use our ears and mouth in the proportion in which they were given to us! We have two ears and one mouth for a reason! We should seek to listen first, before speaking, to make no assumptions about the person in front of us and what they are going through but to listen and understand.

Thirdly, agape love is intended for everyone
Agape love is intended for everyone, not just those within one’s own community. As Christians we don’t believe that any one group is more important than the other. In fact, the early church was a very diverse group of people from slaves to Roman dignitaries, businessmen, fishermen and widows, they suddenly found themselves all together in Christ where the world had put up boundaries between them.
Agape love seeks to include all and exclude none. No one is out of the reach of God’s love, whatever we might think. Jesus’ most challenging teaching was that we should love our enemies. He demonstrated this most powerfully in the story of the Good Samaritan – where the hero of the story is someone who has compassion, who shows that agape love of being sacrificial (he pays for the beaten up traveller to stay in an inn), empathetic – he doesn’t walk on by and ignore the person in need but stops to help and as a Samaritan helping a Jew, he shows love that is inclusive, that doesn’t look at the boundaries the world puts up, boundaries like Jew and Samaritan, black and white, gay and straight, liberal and conservative but sees the humanity in all.

We saw this kind of heroism, this kind of agape love, recently in the staff member, Samir Zitouni, on the train who intervened to stop others being stabbed and put his own life in danger to save others. Many people assumed that the perpetrator of the crime was an asylum seeker – it wasn’t, it was a British person and yet it was an immigrant who ended up being the hero of the story – just like the Good Samaritan.

This is the love we celebrate today and which we are called to emulate. Today we give thanks for those who died for our freedom both in the Great Wars of the last century and also those in this century. We take our inspiration from them and commit ourselves anew to showing this agape love of Jesus, the greatest love of all.

Amen.
 

Rector: Rev’d Bryony Taylor 01246 813569 (please note that the Rector’s day off is Friday)

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